WikiLeaks nominated for 2011 Nobel Peace Prize

OSLO (AFP) – A Norwegian member of parliament said Wednesday he had nominated WikiLeaks for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, insisting the whistleblower website was a gauge of transparency in the world, including in democratic societies.

Jailed Chinese dissident “Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his struggle for human rights, democracy and freedom of speech in China,” Snorre Valen, a member of the Socialist Left Party that is part of the ruling left-leaning coalition, pointed out on his blog.

“Likewise: Wikileaks have (sic) contributed to the struggle for those very values globally, by exposing (among many other things) corruption, war crimes and torture — sometimes even conducted by allies of Norway,” he wrote, implicitly referring to the United States.

After releasing hundreds of thousands of confidential US documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, WikiLeaks has in recent months been slowly publishing more than 250,000 leaked US diplomatic cables, earning the website’s founder Julian Assange powerful enemies in Washington. Read here